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Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) · jewelry

Scarab with Perfect Existence Signs

Source of record: Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

<p>This steatite scarab has a flat underside with a horizontally arranged design with three script signs, two repeated. The design of the back is simple with slightly unbalanced proportions. The workmanship of the piece is good and it is simply made. This amulet has a recreative and /or good luck connotation; the duplication of the signs should strengthen the effect. The third sign is either a fill character, or refers to the all-inclusiveness of 'perfect existence.' The scarab originally would have been mounted or threaded. The combination of signs on the bottom of this scarab is not common.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/42.37' rel='external'>Scarab with Perfect Existence Signs</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

A scarab-shaped Egyptian amulet in beige-brown steatite with a green-blue glazed surface, decorated on top with incised “perfect existence” style signs (crude hieroglyphic forms) bordered by a raised frame.

The image shows the dorsal side of an Egyptian scarab amulet. The surface has a mottled beige-brown body with a green-blue glaze along the raised rim and within the engraved areas. The top is filled with incised signs that resemble typical “perfect existence” scarab text layout: clustered, blocky hieroglyph-like strokes arranged across the center, enclosed by a border/raised field. No clear royal cartouche is visible, and the individual signs are not clean enough to identify with confidence beyond the general presence of “existence” formula elements. There is no visible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text. No deity figures are depicted.

decorative Ancient Egyptian (exact period unclear; likely Late Period to Ptolemaic based on typical scarab-amulet style, but not certain from image alone) poor
Materials beige-brown steatite (body)green-blue glaze (coating)
Signs “Perfect existence” scarab formula signs (unclear individual signs) ×5
Visible text "Incised hieroglyphic signs for a “perfect existence” formula; exact text not legible in this image."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1

English description

[Translation] Sign combination two scrabs above an nb-basket, flanked by nfr-signs: Perfect existence, perfect existence.

Cross-references (2)

  • Walters-AccNum 42.37 tier-2
  • Walters-id 36102 tier-2

Similar inscriptions · by content embedding

About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (Egyptian).
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.